Echo Chamber

Tommy Perman

For a long time I have been fascinated by the hidden support systems that lie beneath our urban environments. Iron and concrete access covers with intriguing graphic designs are dotted across our pavements and roads. They give hints of a subterranean world that most of us will never see, and I enjoy imagining fictional spaces below our feet. This feels particularly apt in the closes of Edinburgh’s old town which were built upon layers and layers of historic buildings.

The Echo Chamber access cover could hint at a concealed recording studio but it also gives reference to a phenomenon of contemporary digital communications. In recent times the phrase Echo Chamber has taken on a new resonance. In our social media bubbles we repeatedly bounce the same ideas off our like-minded associates. Much in the same way that word-of-mouth gossip spread and distorted in the pre-digital age, the original details of a story become gradually warped with each echo. If we don’t let different perspectives in we can become narrow minded allowing ideas to go unchallenged and facts to become distorted.